Product Description
This volume includes works by Spenser (excerpts from all books of The Faerie Queene), Shakespeare (including The Tempest), Marlowe (Dr. Faustus, Hero and Leander), Donne, and Milton (Comus, Samson Agonistes, and long excerpts from Paradise Lost). ... Read more

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"I feel that I have spent half my career with one or another Pelican Shakespeare in my back pocket. Convenience, however, is the least important aspect of the new Pelican Shakespeare series. Here is an elegant and clear text for either the study or the rehearsal room, notes where you need them and the distinguished scholarship of the general editors, Stephen Orgel and A. R. Braunmuller who understand that these are plays for performance as well as great texts for contemplation." (Patrick Stewart)

The distinguished Pelican Shakespeare series, which has sold more than four million copies, is now completely revised and repackaged.

Each volume features:

* Authoritative, reliable texts

* High quality introductions and notes

* New, more readable trade trim size

* An essay on the theatrical world of Shakespeare and essays on Shakespeare's life and the selection of texts ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

Excellent edition of one of the best books ever
Shakespeare's collection of sonnets is so much a part of the western cultural heritage that reviewing it is kind of like taking coals to Newcastle, but it is worth a few words.First, however, a note about this edition: it is exactly what I wanted, with a few unobstructive footnotes at the bottom of each page, an index of first lines, and two critical introductions, one offering up historical context, the other more interpretative.They enhance your reading, they do not do it for you.

Now, why you want to read this collection.Most of us come to the sonnets singly: random reading assignments, in mixed anthologies, or one is quoted provocatively some place. With few exceptions, each is a perfect example of what the sonnet form does and how form itself shapes meaning.But read straight through consecutively, they offer a close-to-the-bone narrative of Shakespeare's preoccupations.This is the source of all that speculation about his sexual preferences.We've all heard lots of opinions on the bard's relationship with the "Young Man" and the "Dark Lady" but there is nothing like getting it first hand, and I must say that my ideas changed after sorting through for myself. For one thing, love--platonic or carnal--is not the only thing on his mind.Immortality, beauty, truth and a few other problems get a work out.The most pleasant surprise is how truly readable and accessible it all is.

Premium edition of the Sonnets
This is a nice edition, worthy of gift-giving. There is only one Sonnet per page, so you can choose one and bookmark it for a friend. The paper is quality and the binding and overall look is very good.

Beautiful
This is in reference to the CD (audiobook) Sonnets read by John Gielgud.Just received my copy and was pleasently surprised that the remastered 60's recording is remarkably clear.Gielgud was one of the greatest actor/directors of Shakespeare, and to listen to him read the sonnets "...trippingly on the tongue...", (Hamlet,act 3, sc. 2.) is nothing short of historical.
Listen to them at night or on a rainy day, or just follow along with a hardcopy of the Sonnets in your hand.You'll be reciting them in short order.

Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage
Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit,
To thee I send this written embassage,
To witness duty, not to show my wit.
(Sonnet 26.)

How to do justice to the legacy of literary history's greatest mind -- moreover in such a limited review? Forget Goethe's "universal genius" and his rebel contemporary Schiller; forget the 19th century masters; forget contemporary literature: with the possible (!) exception of three Greek gentlemen named Aischylos, Sophocles and Euripides, a certain Frenchman called Poquelin (a/k/a Moliere), and that infamous Irishman Oscar Wilde, there's more wit in a single line of Shakespeare's than in an entire page of most other, even great, authors' works. And I'm not saying this in ignorance of, or in order to slight any other writer: it's precisely my admiration of the world's literary giants, past and present, that makes me appreciate Shakespeare even more -- and that although I'm aware that he repeatedly borrowed from pre-existing material and that even the (sole) authorship of the works published under his name isn't established beyond doubt. For ultimately, the only thing that matters to me is the brilliance of those works themselves; and quite honestly, the mysteries continuing to enshroud his person, to me, only enhance his larger-than-life stature.

The precise dating of Shakespeare's sonnets -- like other poets', a response to the 1591 publication of Sir Philip Sidney's "Astrophil and Stella" -- is an even greater guessing game than that of his plays: although #138 and #144 (slightly modified) appeared in 1599's "Passionate Pilgrim," most were probably circulated privately, and written years before their first -- unauthorized, though still authoritative -- 1609 publication; possibly beginning in 1592-1593.

Format-wise, they adopt the Elizabethan fourteen-line-structure of three quatrains of iambic pentameters expressing a series of increasingly intense ideas, resolved in a closing couplet; with an abab-cdcd-efef-gg rhyme form. (Sole exceptions: #99 -- first quatrain amplified by one line -- #126 -- six couplets & only twelve lines total -- #145 -- written in tetrameter -- and #146 -- omission of the second line's beginning; the subject of a lasting debate.) Their order is thematic rather than chronological, although beyond the fact that the first 126 are addressed to a young man -- maybe the Earl of Pembroke or Southampton, maybe Sir Robert Dudley, the natural son of Queen Elizabeth's "Sweet Robin," the Earl of Leicester -- (the first seventeen, possibly commissioned by the addressee's family, pressing his marriage and production of an heir), and ##127-152 (or 127-133 and 147-152) to an exotic woman of questionable virtues only known as "The Dark Lady," even in that respect much remains unclear; including the nature of Shakespeare's relationship with the two main addressees, regarding which the sonnets' often ambiguous metaphors invoke much speculation. #145 is probably addressed to Shakespeare's wife; the closing couplet plays on her maiden name ("['I hate' from] hate away she threw And saved my life, [saying 'not you']:" "Hathaway -- Anne saved my life"), several others contain puns on the name Will and its double meaning(s) (exactly fourteen in the naughty #135: "Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will;" and seven in the similarly mischievous #136), and the last two draw on the then-popular Cupid theme. Sometimes, placement seems linked to contents, e.g., in #8 (music: an octave has eight notes), #12 and #60 (time: twelve hours to both day and night; sixty minutes to an hour); and in the famous #55, which praises poetry's everlasting power and as whose never-expressly-named subject Shakespeare himself emerges in a comparison with Horace's Ode 3.30 -- in turn written in first person singular and thus, denoting its own author as the builder of its "monument more lasting than bronze" ("Exegi monumentum aere perennius") -- as well as through the number "5"'s optical similarity to the letter "S," making the sonnet's number a shorthand reference for "5hake5peare" or "5hakespeare's 5onnets," echoed by numerous words containing an "S" in the text.

Of indescribable linguistic beauty, elegance and complexity, Shakespeare's sonnets owe their timeless appeal to their supreme compositional values, the universality of their themes, and their keen insights into the human heart and soul; as much as their transcendence of the era's poetic conventions which, following Petrarch, heavily idealized the addressee's qualities: a form new and exciting twohundred years earlier, but encrusted in cliche in the late 1500s. Indeed, Shakespeare's "Dark Lady" Sonnet #130 owes its particular fame to its clever puns on that very style, which went overboard with references to its golden-haired, starry- (beamy-, sparkling, sunny-) eyed, cherry- (strawberry-, vermilion-, coral-) lipped, rosy- (crimson-, purple-, dawn-) cheeked, ivory- (lily-, carnation-, crystal-, silver-, snowy-, swan-white) skinned, pearl-teethed, honey- (nectar-, music-) tongued, goddess-like objects. "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;" the Bard countered, proceeded to describe her breasts as "dun," her hair as "black wires," and her breath as "reek[ing]," and denied her any divine or angelic attributes. "And yet," he concluded: "by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare."

Arguably, Shakespeare's very choice of addressees (a young man -- also the subject of the famously romantic #18: "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day;" the first of several sonnets promising his immortalization in poetry -- as well as the "Dark Lady," in turn introduced under the notion "black is beautiful" in #127) itself suggests a break with tradition; and compared to his contemporaries' poetry, even the equally-famous #116's on its face rather conventional praise of love's constancy ("Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments"), echoed in the poet's vow to vanquish time in #123, sounds fairly restrained. But ultimately, Shakespeare's sonnets -- like his entire work -- simply defy categorization. They are, as rival Ben Jonson acknowledged, written "for all time," just as the Bard himself immodestly claimed:

'Gainst death and all oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
(Sonnet 55.)

Also recommended:
The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition
Shakespeare: For All Time (Oxford Shakespeare)
Much Ado About Nothing
Love's Labour's Lost
William Shakespeare's Hamlet (Two-Disc Special Edition)
BBC Shakespeare Comedies DVD Giftbox
BBC Shakespeare Tragedies DVD Giftbox
Olivier's Shakespeare - Criterion Collection (Hamlet / Henry V / Richard III)
William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice
Twelfth Night

Disappointing compilation
I love Shakespeare's sonnets, but that's not what I'm reviewing--I'm reviewing this particular edition of the sonnets. I received it as a gift and, since it was the only copy I had of the sonnets available to me for some time, I looked forward to reading some old favorites.
Much to my chagrin, I couldn't locate any of the sonnets I had made it a point to remember. At last, in an act of desperation, I turned to the preface and found that the editor had renumbered the entire collection according to their probable chronological sequence--meaning the order familiar to nearly everyone has been turned on its head.
Oh, but for convenience's sake, they did put the traditional numbers of the sonnets in Roman numerals and brackets at the bottom of each, which doesn't really help at all. It became bothersome and tiring to seek out even one of the sonnets I enjoyed so much.
The thing that earned this book three stars, though, rather than one or two, is the artwork of Charles Robinson. Even if the numbering of the sonnets is a huge bother, the illustrations are infinitely nice to look at. They have a turn of the century feel which is well-suited to Shakespeare's poems.
This is a nice edition to have for the artwork, or if you can't find another edition (such as the excellent Pelican Shakespeare copy from Penguin). Otherwise, find one that sticks to the usual numbering sequence or has an index of first lines, which this lacks. ... Read more

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A remarkable collection of Edward Hopper's most important paintings and original stories and poems by prominent contemporary writers. This volume includes fifty-nine of Hopper's most important works in full color, as well as original works by thirteen renowned fiction writers and poets that pay homage to, or make reference to, the ways in which Hopper pictured our world. The contributors include Paul Auster, Anne Beattie, Tess Gallagher, Thom Gunn, John Hollander, William Kennedy, Galway Kinnell, Ann Lauterbach, Norman Mailer, Leonard Michaels, Walter Mosley, Grace Paley, and James Salter. Also featured is an essay by art historian Dr. Gail Levin. Hopper's themes of alienation and loneliness, empty cityscapes and countrysides, the stark light of Cape Cod, silent hills and housesall have been indelibly imprinted on our collective sense of ourselves and our country. This work celebrates the impact Hopper's imagery continues to have on contemporary culture and is dedicated to a fuller understanding of Hopper's place in the American mind. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

It was well-written with excellent discription,and . . .
I believe that this was one of the greatest art books.This outstanding book displayed 59 of Hopper's greatest paintings with awesome detail and spectacular quotes.It not only showed the different ways Hopper defined and looked at life, but I could feel like I was the artist.Not only did the paintings create a perspective of life most people don't look at, but I could relate to his points of view. ... Read more

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Demonstrating a poet's imaginative ear and a critic's range of concern, John Hollander here writes about the "melodious guile" with which poetry speaks to us. Through analysis of formal and rhetorical patterns in examples chosen from the whole spectrum of English and American poetry, Hollander describes how poems frame self-reflexive parables in order to represent realms beyond themselves. "John Hollander, himself a fine poet, is such a generalist; and Melodious Guile, to my mind the best of his critical books, takes its place-along with Donald Davie's Articulate Energy and Winifred Nowottny's The Language Poets Use-among the very few enjoyable and enriching studies of how poetry works."-Alastair Fowler, London Review of Books ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

First Rate Intro
An excellent introduction to the use of rhyme and meter to create emotional and intellectual content in poetry (and occasionally in prose). ... Read more

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"A sonnet is a moment's monument," said Dante Gabriel Rossetti in a sonnet about sonnets.

The sonnets in this collection--whether they capture moments of perception, recognition, despair, or celebration--reveal how great an amount of feeling, insight, and experience can be concentrated into a mere fourteen lines.

Here are classics such as Milton's "On His Blindness," Yeats's "Leda and the Swan," and Frost's "The Oven Bird," juxtaposed with the mischievous wit of Rupert Brooke's "Sonnet Reversed," the lyric defiance of Mona Van Duyn's "Caring for Surfaces," and the comic poignancy of Philip Larkin's "To Failure." From the lovelorn laments of Dante and Petrarch to the artful heights of Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare, from the masterpieces of Wordsworth and Keats to the innovations of Elizabeth Bishop, Wallace Stevens, and James Merrill, the sonnet has proved both versatile and enduring.

This delightful anthology displays the incredible range and power of the verse form that has inspired poets across the centuries. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

A Fine Anthology, Within an Elegant Little Book
Maybe one shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but the silky jacket and the dreamy young lady seemed to me to capture the spirit of the sonnet; fortunately the contents also lived up to promise of the cover, fulfilling my hopes and expectations. As with all the Everyman poetry anthologies, this is an elegant collection. The sonnet is a form that one can dip into very rewardingly whenever and wherever one has a few moments to spare, so I was delighted when, for my Sonnets for Sinners: Everything One Needs to Know About Illicit Love, my publisher selected the same nifty vest-pocket size. Anyone who enjoys either of these anthologies will also very much enjoy the companion Everyman series, especially, Love Poems, and Erotic Poems.

Editing is nice. Editor is pompous.
I've been interested in sonnets now for 4 years. I have written about 8 sonnets or attempts since then which I've workshopped on multiple forums. I found this book at a local bookstore, and "SONNETS" just jumped right at me. I searched for one of my favorite sonnets, John Donne's "Batter My Heart Three-Personed God" or alternately "Holy Sonnet XIV." I was disappointed I found neither of those in the table of contents. I did find John Donne though, and subsequently looked up his poem called, "The Soul to Her Rescuer." I found that one, and it was exactly the same poem. It was only later that I read in the forward that Hollander doesn't call the poems what the poet calls the poems.

Other than that, I find this book to be a pleasure to read. It is not written in OldE English, so it is easy to read. All of the poems have something in them to like whether it's theme, rhyme scheme, rhythm, iamb, metrical substitutions, caesurae, assonance, consonance, etc. After reading this, I am now creating sonnets with much more ease.

I wouldn't buy it alone though. I'd buy it with Timothy Steele's All the Fun's in How You Say a Thing. It's a great introduction to formal verse. Also go to poetry workshops like Sonnet Central.

MAN, WAS I LUCKY!
I guess I got the last copy of this anthology. If you're really interested in a historical and global anthology of the sonnet, try to get this second-hand: there are some big surprises and real gems in this that you won't find elsewhere. EVERYMAN, BRING IT BACK! ... Read more

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Oh, Henry!
This edition provides a two page introduction and seven stories for young people by O. Henry - each with a short introduction by the editor. We are presented with O. Henry's masterful The Gift of the Magi; Mammon and the Archer; After Twenty Years; Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlement; The Last Leaf; A Retrieved Reformation and The Pimienta Pancakes.
An interesting feature is a page by page glossary which children and adults alike will find interesting.
These are truly stories for young adults and I am sure they will give pleasure to younger readers.
Once again, I have to say that I derive no particular pleasure from the many colour illustrations which I find, in the main, to be quite unappealing - in a stylised way.Of course, O. Henry (William Sydney
Porter) was born in 1862 and the illustrator, Miles Hyman, has adopted a simplified style of the period - with very mixed results.
The cover design for the book is very strong - but entire stories are illustrated in uninspired fashion - see for example Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen.
This series of books - there is Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, O. Henry, Edgar Allan Poe and Leo Tolstoy - offers a great deal of sophisticated reading pleasure for young people - but fairly pedestrian artwork - with the exception of Herve Blondon for 'Leo Tolstoy' - but that's another story. ... Read more

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1987 59 PP VOICE/PIANO MUSIC, 16 SONGS 8X11 THEO PRESSER ... Read more

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Word count: 4160. ... Read more

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High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! JohnHollander is a Jewish-American poet andliterary critic. As of 2007, he is SterlingProfessor Emeritus of English at Yale University.Previously he taught at Connecticut College, HunterCollege, and the Graduate Center, CUNY. Born toJewish immigrant parents in New York, he attendedColumbia University where he studied under Mark VanDoren and Lionel Trilling, and had Allen Ginsberg asone of his classmates. After graduating, hesupported himself for a while writing liner notesfor classical music albums before returning toobtain a Ph.D. in literature ... Read more